What’s riding on Obama’s open e-gov plans?

How important is the success of President Obama’s open government initiative?

Pretty darn important, according to a new study that applied the well-known American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) methodology to government Web sites.

The ACSI, a 100-point scale developed at the University of Michigan, is a way of gauging how well businesses, Web sites, government agencies and others are doing when it comes to making their customers and constituents happy.

In the new study, research firm [ForeSee Results](http://www.foreseeresults.com/) proffers a strong correlation between easily accessible and navigable government Web sites and important things like how much trust citizens feel in their overseers in Washington and how likely they are to engage in government.

And they’ve got some numbers to back it up.